Abstract
Cross-Medial Analysis of WW2 Eyewitness Testimonies
Although eyewitnesses have become ever more prominent in the media, there is no systematic research about which topics are actually being addressed in their accounts. Such knowledge could enhance our understanding of the different functions and values attributed to testimonies.
This project aims for a cross-medial and diachronic content analysis of eyewitness testimonies (EWTs) in newspapers, on radio and television, and in oral history interviews in the Netherlands since 1945, using a thematic thesaurus (WW2 thesaurus, NOB). This entails the integration of the OHT oral history collection of DANS in AVResearcher.
Besides an upgraded tool for cross-medial text analysis, the project will thus offer a use case for applying different strategies for semi-automatic text extraction, as well as for analysing an OH collection in a digital research environment. Therewith, it hopes to contribute to the further emancipation of oral history as historical source, also in the field of digital humanities.
